How Climate Change Can Go For the Dirt

 


Two studies out of Australia explore the link between climate change and carbon levels in soil.

As a rule, the darker the soil, the more carbon it contains, the more fertile and productive it is.

It's a candle burning from both ends.  At one end the best known villain - industrial agriculture that resorts to intensive growing aided by fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and scads of now rapidly vanishing groundwater, our aquifers.

The lesser known villain burning at the other end is climate change. New South Wales is concerned that  climate change soil impacts may undermine the state's emissions goals.

The concerns are raised in a report on soil health trends in NSW forests, published recently without fanfare by the state’s Natural Resources Commission. It examined soil organic carbon (SOC) levels in eastern NSW forests and how they may be affected by projected rising temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns.

They found major losses could be expected, particularly for southern forests, suggesting “forest managers will have to implement appropriate soil carbon-enhancing strategies even to just maintain current SOC levels”.

“This also has implications for identifying ongoing net carbon emissions from NSW lands, with respect to aiming for Net Zero Emissions and mitigating climate change,” it said.

In other words, the loss of soils carbon will intensify forest loss with fewer trees to absorb CO2 from the air.  Then there's that second report. It finds that climate change can transform soil from a carbon sink into a carbon emitter.

In a separate government report detailing the modelling – known as NARCliM – used, scientists found the problem of soils releasing more carbon as conditions became warmer and drier would be statewide and would accelerate with further heating.

“From the average of the 12 models, in the upper depth interval (0 to 30cm of soil), there is a statewide average 2.5 tonnes of carbon per hectare decrease to the near-future change period [to 2040] and 5.1tC/ha to the far-future change period,” the second report said. The models ranged from as much as 1.6tC/ha additional carbon taken up on average to losses of as much as 12tC/ha.

Scientists have long known the carbon content in soil can vary considerably based on temperatures, moisture content and soil type, among other factors. For instance, rising temperatures tend to boost microbial activity that results in more of the carbon humus in the soil digested, and extra carbon dioxide emitted.

...governments including Australia’s commonwealth and some states are increasingly looking to soil to do much of the work to meet their emissions reduction targets.


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